Chapo Trap House - Bonus: This is Sus 9 – Ray Donovan

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Felix reviews the first episode of Showtime’s long-running crime drama “Ray Donovan”

Hey everybody. Good to be back. So we're here with another episode of The Returning, fan favorite. This is us. This week I'm going on a solo run. I'm doing a show that I've referenced a lot that I think is a very culturally interesting show. It's actually quite a bit a lot more interesting than I thought it was at first. At first I thought it was just this cultural curiosity and now, well to quote, to quote tool, I saw the pieces fit because I watched them fall away. So yeah, this week we're talking about Ray Donovan. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what Ray Donovan means, what it's like kind of, what cultural niche it fits, after I re-kept this. But just as a little background, if you're not familiar with it,

before I get into it, Ray Donovan was a showtime series. You've probably never fucking watched it. Your dad almost 100% watches it. It went on for seven fucking seasons. There were seven seasons of this. And from what you can tell, if you're Google image searching right now or you've seen a billboard or whatever, you know it's about Lee Shriver just grimacing all over the place, right? I mean, you're kind of right that. But your dad fucking loves watching it. Well, I'm going to recap it and then I'm going to talk about it. Then maybe you'll see why all of your dads are so into this shit. Alright, so Ray Donovan begins, it's the first episode of the first season. It begins with John Voight, Mickey being released from prison. He instantly goes

to a priest's apartment, puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. That's the type of show this is. But I do want to note, all joined John Voight scenes, he is, let's just say he's Biden mode. I don't know if he knows that he's in a show. I think that they just like wheel Voight around and they're like, alright, John, this is your son and just point at Lee Shriver. But you know, regardless, John, the real John Voight definitely thinks he killed a pedophile priest because of this scene. But we're then treated to, you know, one of those old-timey Hollywood songs from the 30s is about Hollywood. It's like the Gletsenglamma, the town that's crazy, and then it immediately goes into a shitty lo-fi hip-hop beat. And we have this athlete,

black dude, waking up in a bed next to a dead body, and he calls our hero, Lee Shriver, Ray Donovan. As Ray is trying to listen to this athlete, his wife is bitching about their neighborhood because she can faintly hear rap music. She's like, this is the fucking, like the Jersey shore. This is Abbie Donovan, played by Ann Hayes, with just, I mean, you know, get your paycheck, but just a very bad Boston accent. So Ray's like, yeah, no, I'll see what we can do, Abbie. And to the athlete, he's like, alright, just calm down. He says to him, you think you're the first guy I've ever worked with that woke up next to a dead girl? Because Ray's a central job in this. Ray is portrayed as this like cool Hollywood fixer, but his main thing is wearing really skinny

Donna Karen suits that he got from ACs and throwing overdose women in the dumpster. He basically does that for seven seasons. There's seven seasons of radio that he's the best in LA at this, but that's what he does. And to show how good he is, he calls his team, which is just a blockheaded Israeli wearing the most jewelry ever. And this lesbian that they portray by having an alcoholic, by literally showing her having a bottle of Jameson on her nightstand when Ray calls her, but he's like, team, you know, get in motion. We got to throw another bitch in the garbage. So as Ray is getting ready for his long day of dumpstering, Abbie bitches some more. She's like, you have to talk to Stu Feldman, this awful powerful Jew to get our kids into this exclusive

school in Beverly Hills so we can move and Ray's like, yeah, no, I got you, whatever. So Ray has another phone call with the third awful Jew that we see in the first like five minutes of this, who is some type of Hollywood agent. He tells Ray that his client Tommy Wheeler was caught with a transect worker. Ray then you see Ray work his magic. So what he does is for the paparazzi story not to get out, Tommy Wheeler would need an alibi. So Ray has Tommy Wheeler take the place of the athlete. And then they leak the story of the press that Tommy Wheeler was caught with an overdose girl and then he has a drug problem and goes to rehab because if he's caught with like a dead cis woman that he was partying all night with, he can't be, I mean, I guess, intruded transects

workers and the athlete just goes wherever and then they dumpster the woman and that's why Ray makes $80,000 a year against the Donna Karen suits because he's so good at it. As Ray figures this out, you know, he's on the phone with the most recent Jewish character and we have I think one of the central points of Ray Donovan. The guy is just bitching to him neurotically and Ray's like, don't tell me what to do. I think this is interesting because I'm going to get into my overall theory of Ray Donovan later, but most of the show that isn't Ray throwing women in dumpsters is like just, it's a very anti-Semitic show. Like it just most neurotic, awful, ugly Jewish characters are like, Ray, I want to go commit more rapes and Ray is just totally stoic,

unneurotic, silent, cool, powerful and he's just like, you know, shut up, don't tell me what to do and that's like half the show right there, but you know, we're treated to that at the beginning and if that's not enough, we have Ray meeting with Steve Feldman, that guy that his wife brought up, they can get their kids into that exclusive Beverly Hills school. Steve is just horribly neurotic, he sucks, he's hideous, he has no redeeming qualities, his portrayal is anti-Semitic, but so he basically wants Ray to tell his mistress, a famous singer, to see if he's cheating. So, we cut to a dingy boxing gym and we get some really great background. Ray has a brother with Parkinson's who runs this dingy boxing gym and we learned Ray has another brother who is

an alcoholic named Bunchie who is molested by a Catholic priest at a young age. Very like, very interesting, I want you to note, okay, when we were watching, this is us, we were watching guys, so that's everyone had cancer, everyone had this, everyone had that, everyone had their problems. Ray Donovan is the same way, everyone is molested, everyone has a disease, everyone is an alcoholic. So, Ray calls Bunchie who just, yeah, won that settlement from the church for what happened to him as a boy and Ray says, do you want someone, do you want me to send it for you, pick you up if you're in trouble, and Bunchie's like, I'm not done drinking yet. All right, so Ray goes back to the job, he finds this guy jacking off under Feldman's mistress at

Ashley's Forge. He wants to go to warn her, but the awful jewelry blockheaded Israeli he's with who, I forgot the name of this character, I think it was like Galom or something, he's like, you're going too far, Ray, you're a client to Stu Feldman, not this woman, and Ray just says nothing to him, Ray just barely speaks to Jews, he just goes to her house, to Ashley's house, knocks on her fucking door, and she can't believe it, it turns out they actually, he actually worked for her when she was 16, when she was a child star, and she's, by the way, she's instantly fucking soaking wet for Ray. This part's amazing, he reveals to her that he's working for Stu, and she's like, wow, my God, what a date Stu, he's such a bad guy,

I'm so fucked up, and then they just instantly start making out, instantly, like no one can resist Ray, they're just, like, she basically is warping the wood, the wood paneling of her floor with her pussy juice, the second she sees Ray, it's incredible, but so after like it admittedly like kind of hot, waking out it's in, she has an epileptic seizure, and Ray is like, all right, we gotta stop this, you have to unfuck up your life, here's all the stuff you should do. So, Ray goes to bail, bunch you out of jail, after he had some drunken altercation, all the brothers reconvene in the boxing gym, we have some of that, you know, blah, blah, blah, I'm your brother, exposition that you get in these types of shows, we then find out that

the Donovans have a half, a black half brother that John Voight had with the black woman before the series began, also that his character is racist, of course, further submitting my theory that it's Voight does not know he's playing a character. There's a disgusting scene of Voight with an older black sex worker, there's a Ray scene where he apprehends Ashley Stalker and dies in green, there's a lot, like, these are the two main things Ray does, he throws women in the dumpster and then just comes up with, like, elaborate punishments for bad guys. So, after that is resolved, we get Ezra, Ezra is, he's alluded to as this important evil Jewish guy who has recently lost his wife, he's sometimes superior to Ray, he's only a shiva for his wife,

Ray comes to the service to console him, Ezra appears to be losing his mind, appears to be having dementia or Alzheimer's or something, but nonetheless asks Ray about his father Mickey's release from prison. We learn that Ray's father Mickey has something over them, so he's holding something over them, that his return from prison is bad, Ezra suggests killing Mickey. We don't get Ray's rejoitor to that because we're just at the next day and Ray comes home to Ashley in his living room drinking with his wife. He angrily takes Ashley home telling her to stay away from his family, Ashley tries to make advances on him again, Ray basically goes, you know, get the fuck away from me, Ray's wife calls him to yell at him, so he goes to a hotel to drink whiskey

and have this insane flashback scene. I have to talk about this flashback scene. So, it was done very like, it's done very chinstally. There's, oh man, how do I even talk about this? So, it starts with a little boy in a car licking an ice cream cone. We see a hand push the ice cream cone out of the window and then force the boy's head into his lap as if to give him road head. It's a priest, so that's what's happening. And this is interspersed with a teenage girl throwing herself off of a window to kill herself. This goes on for like five minutes and it's one of the most insane fucking heavy handed things I've seen. It just, I had to re-watch it to make sure I was catching the right things. It was pretty fucking wild. So, after having his insane

hotel flashbacks, Ray's like, all right, that's enough of that. He comes back home, he makes up with Abbey. The entire family goes to another memorial thing for Ezra's wife. At the event, Stu Feldman has this nasty confrontation with Abbey where he says he will block the Donovan children, the son and their daughter, from attending Beverly Hills School that he sits on the board of because he's sure that Ray fucked Ashley. Ray then breaks his arm in front of a household of people. Ray and Abbey have a fight over Mickey at their home. Abbey is weirdly pro of Mickey. Abbey is like, Ray, you have to let Mickey into your heart. Like the scumbag racist dad who's in prison. I don't get it, but whatever. There's a scene where all the brothers, including

the Black Hat brother, and then Voight have a senile confrontation at the brothers fighting gym, and then there's an insane Dinahmont scene of the stalker returning to Ashley's bedied green this time, more flashbacks, and then Mickey visiting the Donovan home when Ray isn't there to talk to Abbey. It is revealed they've been having a correspondence. I have a theory about Ray Donovan. The thing I thought about Ray Donovan before I watched his pilot again was that it was basically like pre-Trump. It was how suburban middle-aged males projected their view of the world. I think that's still kind of right. I still think there's a lot of confluence between the Ray Donovan vision of the world and the Donald Trump vision of the world

that it's just like this completely fallen place and it's run by these sort of deep state pedophiles, which it is, which it is, but that the only way to stop them is through like just sort of stoic masculinity that kind of doesn't exist. Like Ray Donovan isn't even that stoic throughout the series. Like he's a very inconsistent character. There's a bunch of times where he just screams insanely, but I think fathers love it. There's a special psychological reason why fathers love it, and I figured it out. Ray Donovan is, this is us, and Council of Dads and all these shows, it's that for men. What was our thesis about Council of Dads and this is us? We remember our thesis that we are given these characters who have no friction or no true struggle. We're giving

them, we're giving them cancer, we're giving them just this deep victimhood that they just take and stride. They have no problem with death, cancer, any other type of illness, any other type of frictionless strife. They're taking stride and it's okay because they have family and it's made for women. It's made for like, you know, sort of boomer moms, Gen X moms, whatever, solidly middle class people, and it's made that way because the makers of this show want them to look at their lives and go, oh, this isn't that bad. It's the producers of the show saying, what are you complaining about, you fucking piece of shit? Here you fucking morons love this shit. Oh, it's not interesting enough for you here. Boom, I just gave five more characters

cancer. Here you go, you fat fucking freak. Here you fucking go. But one of those shows has to exist for men, right? And the male version of this, the male version of giving every character cancer and killing them and secret affairs and blah, blah, blah, that is Ray Donovan because Ray Donovan is, it's that sort of arch conservative view of the world that it is just completely fallen and morally bankrupt and horrifying. It is filled with sharp little points that are going to prick you. It's all those AIDS infected needles and Halloween candy. People are nasty just for the sake of being nasty. And you can only navigate this with this sort of masculine self-assured confidence. And I think that, how should I say this? I think that these shows are important for

upper middle-class dads. And they're important because of how alienated they feel from any type of meaning. What I thought was notable about Ray Donovan is how much tragedy there is among the characters. Everyone's molested. Everyone has a traumatic relationship with their father. Everyone has everyone. They just deal with the shittiest people on a day-to-day basis. They're just trying to protect their family from these evil forces all the time. And I thought that was interesting because I think that's part of the American ethos, that we think that just like tragedy in and of itself. We lose a parent, we lose a brother, we lose a sister, we lose a friend. And in and of itself, it gives us the special insider meaning. But oftentimes, it means nothing.

No tragedy instantly gives you any special anything. It's not granted to you. The only way to get that meaning through tragedy, through strife, through life is the choices you make and what relation you have to other people and what you do. But for the people that watch Ray Donovan, for the upper middle class father in America, they're too alienated for that most of the time. Life itself isn't actually sexy enough. Everyone in your actual life is probably ugly. None of the hard things you do are very interesting or physically dangerous. I mean, if you're actually making a sacrifice, it's never seen. The biggest ulterior benefit you get from it probably is just you thinking about it in private moments, thinking about how it makes

you a good person, maybe like the little opposite of that thing where you think of an embarrassing thing you did while you're trying to fall asleep. But Ray Donovan, it flips that on its head. Everyone is hot and they're all trying to fuck you. Every tragedy gave you meaning and made you a cooler, more stoic badass and you use that to protect your family. Every sociopathic awful thing you do, that's for your family, so it's okay. Ray Donovan is aware of life's aesthetic and dramatic limitations because it's made for people who are vaguely aware of that, who are aware that living a life of meaning is too difficult, so they watch this show. It internalizes the boring sociopathy of being sort of this rich suburban dad and pushes out this absurdly

melodramatic thing where the stoic male hero is the most molested, most put-upon, most feared, most competent, most sexually attractive man at all times, at all angles, at all events, and he's just trying to make it through this fallen, lost world. It's the most American thing because God is completely dead. There's no goodness in this world, but the last fragments of God exist in the heart of Ray Donovan, aka the American male. The last fragments of knowing every, like, Ray Donovan is, he knows everything, he sees everything, he has a contingency for everything. That is the last fragment of God's omnipresence and omniscience. It's an insanely ideological show. You know, if we are to call the American Empire fascist, this may be the most fascist show.

So that's episode one of Ray Donovan. That's my entire theory on it. I've been trying to think of a good guest to have on for profiling Ray Donovan. One will come to mind, but I just needed to get this one out there because we haven't done one in a while. Just a short one, just about 20 minutes, but I just wanted to get it back up. Alright, thank you guys. I'll talk to you soon.